Nevada Barr - Blind Descent

Sondra McCarty? She'd disappeared some time ago, something to do with a bad marriage. Anna and Curt? Laymon wouldn't need to explain. What had they to do with him? Given sufficient warning, the Blacktail would close up shop before Holden had a chance to investigate. Holden would tell of their entering Lechuguilla and why. A dig through the slide in the Pigtail would be considered, then rejected as too dangerous and costly. If anybody had to take a fall, Oscar Iverson would be chosen. Laymon, with Anna's invaluable assistance, had set him up.

As if he felt the menace behind him, Laymon stood suddenly and crossed to the far side of the room. Anna watched as he put the pack with the gun between his feet and sat on a ledge. The time for pouncing had been frittered away in indecision. Anna had deliberated too long. A minute ticked by to the unsuspecting murmur of Curt's voice down the passageway. Muttering harmless nothings to assure Sondra he was still there.

The mother of invention brought an idea. Though it promised little in the way of success, Anna embraced the opportunity to take action. Laymon guarded his pack with care. Curt's was closer but, gone missing, would cause alarm. Anna was counting on the fact that distraught women are never believed, even by the most well-meaning men. Unless they'd seen Sondra drop it themselves, they would assume she'd left her pack behind, lost it in one of the hiding places Lechuguilla offered in such abundance. Squelching a desire to rush, Anna weaseled quietly back the way she had come. Sondra's pack lay out in the room, only partially shielded from view by a formation. Laymon had his light on, but unless he trained it in that direction, she could maneuver the pack into her trough unnoticed.

As she dragged it, the pack made a faint grinding sound. Light streaked toward the back of the room. A snatch, and the pack was clutched under Anna's chest. The light poked, preyed, faltered, then returned to Laymon's feet.

Scuttling backward with her prize, like an alligator with a Pekinese, Anna vanished into the trough. The water, she drank. The webbed belt, she wriggled into, graceless as a supine woman donning a wet girdle. Safety and rack were tethered to the webbed climbing belt. She was sliding the pack over her shoulder when she heard Curt and Sondra coming back from the ladies' room. Burrito bundle in hand, Sondra emerged first. Trusting the noise of their return to mask that of her crawl, Anna moved through the trough on elbows and knees. The pilfered water sloshed in her stomach, then was manifested as salt sweat in her eyes.

"Time to move out, kiddos," Laymon said. "The sooner we get to Glacier Bay, the sooner we can get back to your Miss Anna."

Belly flat against the rock, Miss Anna dropped onto an eighteen inch ledge used as a jumping-off point for the descent. Two yards ahead she could see the rope, red and inviting, where it crossed the step and vanished into the pit.

"Suit up," Laymon said jovially. To others it might have seemed he strove to maintain morale. To Anna's ear the good cheer was that of a man who very soon would have the solution to all of his problems.

Gear grated, nylon rustled, carabiners clinked; then came a thin wail. "I can't find my stuff!" Sondra'd discovered the theft.

"Oh for Chrissake," Anna heard Laymon groan just above her. He rose to his feet and stalked back into the chamber. Anna dared one quick peek. He'd taken his pack with him.

Blessing the timely diversion, she scrabbled along the step and grabbed the rope. Ignoring her safety, she laced the rope through the rack. No mean feat without light.

"You two keep looking," Laymon said. He was returning to his former position. "I'll head down. If you don't come up with it, I'll send my gear back up and we'll sort of piggy-back from here on."

Anna's rigging was probably imperfect, possibly deadly, but it would have to do. With an unvoiced prayer to an unknown god that looked remarkably like her older sister, she swung over the edge. The rope was snug through the rack. Nothing snapped loose or flew open. Almost falling for the first few seconds, she descended rapidly. Without light she had no way of knowing where the bottom was.

When she found it, she wished she'd had the good sense to go more slowly. Her tailbone smacked into rock, sending a paralyzing jolt up her spine and down both legs. What a bad joke, to be lying crippled when Laymon dropped on her. Luck held. Everything worked. It hurt, but it worked. Daring one flick of her lamp, she sighted the ascension rope on the far side of the pit. Between the looming crusted tables, a red snakey tongue licked dead-white stone.

Hidden by darkness, she crawled in the direction she'd aimed herself. The crack of her helmet against the wall let her know she'd arrived.

"Did you hear something?" Curt, sounding hollow as he looked down into the dry well that was the Cocktail Lounge. Lamps appeared, weak and watery searchlights, scouring the pit. Anna lined herself up behind one of the flat-topped formations that gave the place its name. If they saw her the game was up. Shooting fish in a barrel.

Every cloud, and all that: Anna found a silver lining. In the light from the search and under cover of sound from conversation, she opened Sondra's pack and fished out her ascenders. Ascenders were complicated, made to go over boots, not rubber socks. Until they were properly attached to the rope, the angular devices of metal dragged on the ground, clattering at every step. Gloves in her teeth, Anna worked so fast her fingers fumbled one into the other, but she was rigged by the time she heard Laymon say, "Must've been Hodags," and the lights were snatched back from the deep.

Holding an ascender in each hand to muffle their noise, she knee-walked awkwardly along the wall till the elbow she skinned over the stone brushed against the rope. Working by feel, she wrestled the metal chest harness over her head and cinched it tight above her breasts. The fit wasn't bad. For so tall a woman, Sondra was small-boned. Taking the pin from the ascender on her right foot, she threaded rope through it, replaced the pin, and tugged on it to assure herself it was rigged solidly. The left foot went into a stirrup, the ascender at the knee. Anna threaded it, then double-looped the stirrup around her foot so it would stay in place without the rigidity of a boot for support.

Ready as she would ever be, she stretched the elastic line from her shoulder into the hook on the ascender and pulled herself upright on the rope.

The ascender wouldn't catch. Rope flailed impotently between her legs. Panic stopped her breath, and she heard the freight-train roar of blood behind her eardrums.

Easy does it. One step at a time. Walk before you run. Her mind chanted aphorisms to keep her body in touch with her brain. An ascender grabbed. She rope-walked up twelve inches. The other caught, the left, and the noose she'd tied around her foot tightened over the fine bones. Pain was bad; damage could be considerable. There was no time to rethink the plan.

Another few inches gained. By taking as much weight as she could with her arms, she eased the coils around her instep. Ten more inches. Maybe eight.

Step and step and do not scream. Behind her, scarcely ten yards across and thirty up, she could hear the others as clearly as over a good AT amp;T connection. Any minute, surely, one of them would turn their light on her and the shooting would begin.

A step, a lift, a grinding of bones. A step and another. With every lift of her feet, rope dragged across her ankles. Where once there had been leather there was only thin cotton. Her trousers were no match for the heft of rope and body. Skin was abraded away one thin slice at a time. Twenty-seven steps. Seventy-three left to go. Would seventy three layers of flesh take the rope down to bone? Anna pondered that conundrum for eight more pulls in hopes the grisly picture would serve to block out the cutting.